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THOMAS GYLES AND HIS NEIGHBORS, 



1669-1689: 



SETTLEMENT OF THE LOWER, KENNEBEC. 



BY 



Rev. JOHN ADAMS VINTON, A.M. 

Author of the " Giles Memorial,'' and Member for Life of the N. l!.JHistoric-Genealogical Society. 



JFtrst printed in tlje N. 3E. historical mtt G&enealogical Register, 



BOSTON: 

DAVID CLAPP & SON, PRINTERS 334 WASHINGTON STREET. 

186 7. 




••b*** wnkaewn 



THOMAS GYLES AND HIS NEIGHBORS. 

16 6 9— -1689. 



Among the early inhabitants of Salem, was Thomas Gyles. No 
record of him exists in that place. He is made known to us by the 
Gloucester Register of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, which has the 
following : 

" Thomas Verrey, sonne of goodwife Gyles, was married by the 
Deputy Governor, Mr. Endicott, unto Hannah Gyles, daughter of 
Thomas Gyles of Salem, upon the 6th of the 5th mo., 1650." 

The Thomas Very here mentioned was the step-son of Edward 
Gyles of Salem, who became a freeman of Massachusetts Bay, May 
14, 1634. Edward Gyles was dead in 1650, and therefore is not men- 
tioned in the record just quoted. Thomas Very lived in Gloucester, 
and the record was doubtless made under his sanction. He died 
there, March 28, 1694. 

Of the history of Thomas Gyles of Salem we are wholly uninformed. 
We have reason to think, however, that he was a brother of Edward 
Gyles of Salem, already mentioned, and thakjhe returned to England 
soon after the marriage of his daughter to Thomas Very. 

Nineteen years after the marriage just referred to, another Thomas 
Gyles appears at the confluence of the Androscoggin and Kennebec 
rivers in Maine. Nothing forbids the supposition that he was the son 
of the earlier Thomas of Salem. A coat of arms, still existing among 
the descendants of Edward Gyles of Salem, is identical, the crest ex- 
cepted, with a coat of arms found among the descendants of Thomas 
Gyles of Kennebec, and also with the armorial bearings of Sir Edward 
Gyles of Devonshire.* Looking in the same direction is the fact, that 
after the murder of Thomas Gyles in 1689, his brother John retired to 
Salem, the residence of his presumed cousins. 

In 1669, Thomas Gyles purchased a tract of land, loosely described 
as being two miles long and one mile wide, on Merry-meeting Bay, 
within the present township of Topsham. Before proceeding further 
with his history, let us inquire what title he had to his land, what 
neighbors he had, and what was the condition of things around him. 

The land came into his possession by a deed from Thomas Watkins 
and his wife Margaret, dated May 8, 1669. The grantor calls himself 

* Sir Edward Gyles was one of the Patentees named in the Great Charter of James I., 
dated Nov. 3, 1620. Sec Hazard's State Papers, i. 103. Drake's History of Boston, p. 34. 



/ 



4 Thomas Gyles and Ids Neighbors. 

" Thomas Watkings, planter, now living at the westerly side of Cane- 
back river." He had not lived there long. Thomas Watkins of 
Sagadahock.was one of the men, who, at the summons of the Royal 
Commissioners, took the oath of allegiance under the patent to the 
Duke of York in September, 1665. Of course he was then living on 
the easterly side of the Kennebec, and probably within the present 
limits of Woolwich.* He was of Boston, August 19, 1661, when 
he received from " John, an Indian Sagamore, of a place called by the 
English the High Head, being on the westerly side of the place called 
Merry-Meeting Bay," a deed of the land which he sold in 1669 to 
Thomas Gyles. [Suff. Deeds, 3 : 495.] He may also have taken a 
deed from the assignees of the Plymouth Patent. f 

The title of Thomas Gyles, who bought of Watkins, was, on the 
supposition just made, derived from the same source. But as the 
claim of the New Plymouth Colony to the territory from Merry-meeting 
Bay to the sea was early called in question, and as little respect was 
paid to the claims of Gorges and Rigby to territory east of Casco, In- 
dian deeds were taken by many of the settlers from 1643 onwards. J 
This reason, as well as his sense of justice, induced Mr. Gyles to pro- 
cure from Darumquin,§ a sagamore of the Anasagunticooks, a formal 
conveyance of the farm, in the presence of Thomas Watkins, Thomas 
Stevens, William Davis, Cornelius Paine, John Paine, and several 

* There was a Thomas Watkins and wife Elizabeth of Boston, where the births of their 
children are recorded from 1653 to 1670. He was of Boston Dec. 10, 1662, when he 
appraised the goods of Daniel Downies. He was made freeman of Massachusetts, May 
30, 1660 ; was of the Art. Co. 1666 ; and died Dec. 16, 1689. Of course he was a different man. 

t In the year 1627, Isaac Allerton, being in England, obtained from the Council of Ply- 
mouth a patent for the Colony cf New Plymouth, of an extensive tract of land on the Kcn- 
nehec. This patent was renewed, with some amendment and enlargement, in the year 
1630. The New Plymouth people immediately established a trading house on the Kenne- 
bec, and their trade for a time was very profitable. There was no effort or intention, how- 
ever, to establish a plantation on that river ; nor indeed had the}' any families to spare for 
such a purpose. During nearly a hundred years after the date of that patent, the banks 
of that noble stream were almost wholly unoccupied. A third of a century after its 
date, to wit in 1661, that patent was sold to Antipas Boies, Edward Tyng, Thomas Brattle, 
and John Winslow, all of Boston, for £400 sterling. At the time of t'hesale, this extensive. 
and beautiful territory, perhaps comprehending nearly a thousand square miles, contained 
not more than three hundred white people ; perchance not two-thirds of this number. 

The claim under the Plymouth Patent originally extended from the present town of 
"Waterville clear down to the sea, including Merry-meeting Bay and the settlement of P.nr- 
chas and others at Pejepscot, now Brunswick. This claim, however, was disputed; and 
for a long time there was a controversy between the assignees thereof and the Pejepscot 
Proprietors, which was settled in 1763 by a decision of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, 
which defined the South line of the Patent to be the North line of the present town of 
Pittston, on the East side, and a line drawn through the South bend of Cobbcsse-Conte 
river on the West side, extending 15 miles each way — Williamson, i. 237. 

j In 1643, the large island between Arrowsic and Sheepscot river, known to the Indians 
as Erascohegan, but since known as Parker's Island, was purchased of a Sagamore by- 
John Parker, with a portion of what is now Phipsburg. Christopher Lawsoii, in 1649, 
purchased of the Indians nearly the whole of Woolwich and perhaps Alna. A part of this 
land he assigned in 1653, to Thomas Clark and Thomas Lake, merchants of Boston, who, 
in 1660, bought the neighboring island of Arrowsic. In 1648, Robinhood, Sagamore of 
Nequasset [now Woolwich], sold to James Smith a parcel of land in that town." In 1649, 
he sold to John Richards, the island of Jercmisquam, now constituting the town of West- 
port ; and in 1654 he conveyed to Edward Bateman and John Brown, all the easterly part 
of Woolwich. The present village of Wiscasset was in 1663 purchased by George Davie, 
who then lived at Wiscasset, and was brother of Humphrey Davie, of Boston, who bought 
Swan Island, below Gardiner, of the Indians in 1669, and afterwards lived there. Indeed, 
it appears that most of the land in that vicinity, and on the Kennebec River, was purchased 
of the Indians, and is now held under Indian deeds, and not under charters. See William- 
son, i. 53, 330, 671, 683. Sullivan's Maine, pp. 144—149. 

§ Dai-umquin i< called Tarumkin in Williamson's History of Maine, and in Drake's 
Book of the Indians. He lived on the Androscoggin river. 



Thomas Gyles and his Neighbors. 5 

others, both English and natives. The land was bounded by marked 
trees, distinguishable fifty years afterwards. 

In the Collections of the Maine Historical Society, Vol. III., p. 314, 
there are several errors, which it is desirable now to correct. 

1. Thomas Gyles, it is there said, settled near Merry-meeting Bay, 
some years prior to 1666, The deed from Thomas Watkins, which 
conveyed to him his estate in that vicinity, and of which I have print- 
ed an exact copy in my Gyles Memorial, is dated May 8, 1669. That 
Thomas Gyles was then recently from England is rendered extremely 
probable by three circumstances. (1) The residence of Thomas Wat- 
kins is given, but not the residence of Thomas Gyles. (2) The con- 
sideration for which the land was sold, £27, was paid in English goods, 
no doubt just brought from London. (3) James Gyles, who was 
doubtless a brother of Thomas Gyles, came to Merry-meeting Bay 
from England in May, 1669. 

2. It is said that Thomas Gyles lived on the right bank of the Pe- 
jepscot or Androscoggin river. This would place him on the south 
side of that river, in the present town of Brunswick ; whereas nothing 
is more certain than that he lived on the north side, in Topsham. 
This is proved not only by the deed from Watkins, which locates his 
farm between Muddy river on the north, and Pejepscot river on the 
south, but by several quitclaim deeds given by the heirs of Thomas 
Gyles to the Pejepscot Proprietors in 1727, 1758, and 1760, of which 
1 have full and exact copies. 

3. It is said that Thomas Gyles, at the commencement of the Indian 
war of 1675, was taken prisoner by the Indians, and his wife killed 
while in the garden picking beans. This statement is repeated by 
Rev. Eufus King Sewall, in his "Ancient Dominions of Maine." 
Neither branch of this statement is correct. Thomas Gyles left his 
farm on Merry-meeting Bay in the autumn of 1674, called home to 
England on urgent business. His father had died there, and he went 
to receive his share of the paternal estate. He took his family with 
him, and was absent from this country until some time in 1676. To 
his farm on the Pejepscot he never returned. 

The land of Thomas Gyles was bounded on the south and east by 
Merry-meeting Bay, where the Androscoggin unites with the broad 
Kennebec ; north by Muddy River, which is merely an arm of the sea, 
four or five miles long, for a while collateral with this Bay, and then 
falling into it ; and west by land of Capt. Reynolds. Reynolds, how- 
ever, did not live there when Mr. Gyles made the purchase. The farm 
ran up two miles in length on Muddy River to a fresh-water brook, 
and then extended one mile across (and south) to Pejepscot River. 
Projecting into Merry-meeting Bay was a point of land of considerable 
elevation, on which Mr. Gyles erected a house, where during four or 
five years he resided. 

What neighbors had Thomas Gyles at that time ? They were not 
so many, as not to be easily counted. 

The farm of Capt. Reynolds joined on the west ; James Thomas and 
Samuel York were his neighbors on the south-west ; Thomas Purchas 
and Thomas Stevens were still on the other side of the Pejepscot, in 
Brunswick, near the line of Bath, not more than four miles from Mr. 
Gyles on the south ; perhaps George Way,* also, was still there ; 



* James Thomas ami Samuel York bought of Darumquin ami Robinhood, .Inly 22, 1670, 
a tract of land two miles long, fronting on Merry-meeting Bay, ami extending back to 



6 Thomas Gyles and his Neighbors. 

Humphrey Davie, a merchant of Boston, son of Sir John Davie, bought 
Swan Island of the Indians in 1669, and was now living there, five 
miles to the north-east ; Thomas Watkins lived at Nequasset, in the 
present town of Woolwich ; Richard Hammond, Samuel Smith, Joshua 
Grant, John Barnes, John White, John Brown, Edward Bateman, and 
some others, were also in Woolwich, 8 or 10 miles to the east ; George 
Davie and John Mason were in Wiscasset ; Sylvanus Davis and Nicho- 
las Raynal * were on Arrowsic Island, where Thomas Clark and Thomas 
Lake of Boston, the owners, spent a portion of their time every year ; 
John Parker may still have been on Parker's Island. According to 
Sullivan, p. 170, there were, in 1610, 20 families on the west, and 30 
on the east bank of the Kennebec. More remotely, William Dyer was 
at Sheepscot, now Newcastle ; Walter Phillips and others were at 
Damariscotta ; Thomas Gardiner, Henry Joscelyn, Thomas Elbridge, 
and others, at Pemaquid. Besides these was James Gyles, on Muddy 
River, of whom more hereafter. 

It is well known that the colonization of Maine, though begun 
earlier, proceeded with much less rapidity than that of the other por- 
tions of New England. The causes are found, partly in the insecurity 
of the land-titles, the grants frequently overlapping each other, but 
chiefly in the different motives which governed the early colonists. 
Those who first settled in Maine were drawn thither for worldly pur- 
poses, to catch fish, and to trade with the Indians ; while the more 
western colonies were founded under the higher and stronger impulses 
of religion. When Thomas Gyles settled in Maine, nearly fifty years 
had elapsed since the first permanent occupation of its shores by white 
men. Yet there were, on all its extended coast line of more than three 
hundred miles, only seven incorporated towns ;f while Massachusetts 
had fifty or more, Plymouth twelve, and Connecticut twenty-two. 
Maine, with an area equal to all the rest of New England, had a popu- 
lation of only 3000 souls ; while Massachusetts had 30,000, Plymouth 
5000, and Connecticut 10, 000. J The Royal Commissioners, in 1666, 
say, in Maine "there are but few towns, and those much scattered, 

they are rather farms than towns." Most of the settlements 

east of Falmouth, were little better than fishing stations. § At the 

Muddy River, and having the farm of Mr. Gyles on the North-east. Purchas settled on 
Stevens River in what is now Bru iswick, about 1824, and Stevens and Way came not long 
after. 

* Are Raynal and Reynolds the same name ? and is Nicholas Raynal the same man as 
Capt. Reynolds whose firm lay immediately west of the farm of Thomas Gyles ? AVe think 
so. We find Nicholas Raynal at Arrowsick in 1665, being then appointed a magistrate or 
justice by the Royal Commissioners. Capt. Reynolds, not long after 1669, owned a farm 
west of Mr. Gyles, but it does not appear that he lived there. 

f These were — Kittery, including Kittcry, Elliot, and the two Berwicks, incorporated 
1647 ; Yorky, 1652 ; Wells, including Kennebunk, 1653 ; Saco, including Biddeford, 1653 ; 
Cape Porpo ise, afterwards called Arundel, and now Kennebunk-port, 1653; Scarborough, 
1658; Falmouth, including Cape Elizabeth, Westbrook, Portland, and the islands in Casco 
B:iy, 1658. Kittery was incorporated under the patent of Gorges; the others under the 
government of Massachusetts. For the names of the towns in Massachusetts, see Barry, 
ii. 4, note. 

% These are the estimates of the careful and, judicious Palfrey. Hist, of N. England, in. 
pp. 35, 38. The less accurate Williamson, i. 447, thinks that Maine had from 5JO0 to 6000 
at this time. 

§ I annex a statement made in 1701, by Capt. Sylvanus Davis, who had excellent oppor- 
tunities to know the condition of things in Maine about this time. He was of Damariscotta 
in 1659 and some years subsequent. When Clarke and Lake became owners of Arrowsic, 
about 1665, lie removed to that island, where he was their general agent. At tin' Indian 
massacre there, Aug. 14, 1676, lie was severely wounded, and hardly escaped with his life. 
After this he settled at Falmouth (he was there in 1684), and finally in Boston, where lie 



Thomas Gyles and his Neighbors. 7 

same time, the Commissioners were profoundly impressed with the 
rapid growth, the greatness and the prosperity of Massachusetts. 

The earliest permanent settlement on the Kennebec was made by 
Thomas Purchas, about the year 1624. We derive this date from a 
deed to Richard Wharton, a merchant of Boston, executed July 7, 
1684, by Warumbee and five other Indian Sagamores, of land on both 
sides of the Pejepscot or Lower Androscoggin. This deed says that 
about sixty years before, Thomas Purchas took possession of the tract, 
and settled near the centre of it. [Williamson, i. 573.] Purchas 
was a trader with the Indians for furs. He lived in the present town- 
ship of Brunswick, about five miles east of the college, and near the 
head of Stevens's or New Meadows river. [Ibid, i. 33, note.'] Not 
far from the same time, George Way and Thomas Stevens settled in 
the same neighborhood. Purchas and Way claimed the land on both 
sides of the Androscoggin, and from the Falls in Brunswick down to the 
sea. [Ibid, i. 266.] The foundation of this claim is said to have been 
a patent from the Council of Plymouth in England, dated in 1632-3. 
[Ibid., i. 690.] This is alleged in a deed to Richard Wharton, 
made 1683, by Eleazar Way, relinquishing his right as son and heir of 
George Way. [Willis, Hist, of Portland, p. 41.] It is said also that 
they purchased the same tract of the natives. [Williamson, i. 90.] 

died in 1703, without issue. He was a landholder in Maine, and a Councillor of Massachu- 
setts under the charter of 1692. 

The statement which follows has hitherto existed, I believe, only in manuscript. It is in 
the handwriting of Dr. Belcher Noyes, of Boston, who was one of the Pejepscot Proprietors 
in 1758. It may safely be accepted as a true statement of the progress of colonization in 
Maine, east of Casco Bay, previous to 1660. 

" March, 1701. Capt." Silvanns Davis gives this account of ye several English settlements 
that he hath known to be fonnerly at and to the Eastward of Kennebec or Sagadahoc along 
the Sea Coast to Montonicus. 

" Sundry English Fishing places some 70 some 40 years since, at Sagadahoc many Familys 
& ten Boats sometimes more, at Cape Norwagan many Familys & 15 Boats. 

At Hypocris Island, 2 Boats. 

— Damans Cove, 15 do. 

— Two Bacon Gutt, ? Fishermen 

— Holmes Island, 5 * isnermen - 

— Pemaquid, 5^ 

— New Harbour, 6 > Fishing Vessells. 

— Monhegan, near 20 ) 
St. Georges, Fishers. 
Mentenicus Island, 20. 

Farmers Eastward. 
At near Sagadahoc, 20. 
East side of Sagadahoc to MeiTymeeting, 31. [This seems to mean that on or near 

the west bank of the Lower Kennebec there were 20 families, and 31 on or near its 

east bank, in Woolwich, Arrowsic, &c] 
From Cape Newagan to Pemaquid, 6 Farmers. 
At Pemaquid, 15 ; at New Harbor, 10. 
At St. Georges, West side, Mr. Foxwell. 
Saquid Point, 60 years agoe, 1. 
On the East side of Sisquamego, 1. 

Phillip Swades, 50 years agone, besides Fishermen, 60 or 70 years, 84 within Land. 
At St. Georges, 84 Familys. [This item repeats the preceding. Compare with this 

the statement of Sullivan, that 84 families occupied, in 1631, Pemaquid and the 

shores adjacent.] 
Between Kennebec and Georges River, 12. 
At Sheepscott town besides Fanners. 
Between Sheepscott and Damariscotty River, 10. 
At Damariscotty, 7 or 8. 
Between Damariscotty, Muscongus, ) 19 -pv,™^* 

Pemaquid & Round Pond, 5 ^-^nws- 

" Many more had begun to settle, many taken Lotts with intent speedily to settle, but 
were disappointed by ye warr. Beside the great Improvements, Houses, Mills, Stores, 
Maulting, Building of ships & vessels, the Inhabitants daily increasing." 



8 Thomas Gyles and his Neighbors. 

These deeds to Wharton constituted what was called '■' The Pejepscot 
Purchase," a fruitful source of controversy for eighty years afterwards. 
It was terminated in 1*768, by a decree of the Supreme Court of Mas- 
sachusetts. 

Thomas Watkins, already mentioned, died before 1614, and his 
widow Margaret married Thomas Stevens, who is also mentioned 
above. We hear nothing of Purchas after Sept. 1675, when his house 
was plundered by the Indians, and himself driven away.* 

Thomas Gyles appears to have left a good home, a plentiful estate, 
and a desirable social rank, in Old England. His son John introduces 
his Personal Narrative, written in IT 36, thus : "I have been advised 
to give a particular account of my father, which I am not very fond of, 
having no dependence on the virtues or honors of my ancestors to 
recommend me to the favor of God or men." It is a plain inference 
from this language that Thomas Gyles was not only a good man, but 
a man of honorable lineage. Again he says — " He laid out no incon- 
siderable income, which he had annually from England, on the place." 
He must therefore have been the possessor of a handsome estate in 
the old country, as well as in the new. 

When Mr. Gyles setled on the Kennebec, 1669, that region was in 
a flourishing and hopeful state. Massachusetts had successfully assert- 
ed her chartered rights over the eastern country as far as the Penob- 
scot ; there was now a prospect of a well-ordered civil government, 
such as had yielded the happiest results on the banks of the Merrimac 
and the Charles ; and the Indians were quiet and peaceable, far and 
near. Those disturbers, the Koyal Commissioners, had returned to 
England utterly baffled. Mr. Gyles, accordingly, dwelt happily in his 
New England home between five and six years. Receiving notice of 
the death of his parents in England, he returned to that country with 
his family in the autumn of 1674, as his son says, "to settle his 
affairs." This of course took up considerable time. He probably did 
not return to New England till the spring or summer of 1676. " On 
his arrival at Boston, the Eastern Indians had begun their hostilities." 
Their hostilities in Maine began in September, 1675 ; were prosecuted 
with great fury during the summer of 1676 ; the whole coast east of 
Falmouth, and many places west of it, being made desolate ; and the 
work of massacre and ravage went on till April, 1677. 

Mr. Gyles came back with the design of returning to his farm ; but 
this being impracticable, "he began," says his son, " a settlement on 
Long Island." This was probably at Southold, near the eastern end 
of that Island, where James Gyles, presumed to be his brother, was 
abiding at this time. Southold was settled from New England. " The 
air of that place," continues the Narrative, "not so well agreeing 
with his constitution, and the Indians having become peaceable, he 
again proposed to resettle his lands in Merry-meeting Bay ; but find- 
ing that place deserted" — the settlements for many scores of miles 
around being utterly blotted out of existencef — "and finding that 
plantations were going on at Pemaquid, he purchased several tracts 

* Since writing the above, I have been informed that his grave-stone has been found in 
Brunswick, from which it appears that he died in 1679, or about that time. 

t " Between Casco Bay and the Penobscot not an English settlement remained." Pal- 
frey, iii. 208. 



Thomas Gyles and his Neighbors. 9 

of land of the inhabitants there." In June, 16*77, Major Edmund An- 
dros, who was governor at New York, anxious to secure for the Duke 
of York the territory in Maine which Charles II. had given to that 
prince in 1665, but which had hitherto been neglected by him, sent a 
military force to Pemaquid, with orders to rebuild the fort there, and 
take possession of the country. Confiding in the protection of the 
fort, now called fort Charles, and manned with fifty soldiers, the set- 
tlers who had been driven away by the Indians now returned, but 
were obliged to take new deeds from the New York authorities, and 
pay considerable sums into the pockets of the ducal officers. Mr. 
Gyles took up his residence in 1678 within a quarter of a mile from 
fort Charles, in the settlement which soon grew up in the neighbor- 
hood, which received the name of Jamestown, in honor of the Duke of 
York.* 

When Pemaquid, with the line of coast of which it was the principal 
settlement, was constituted a judicial district, under the name of the 
County of Cornwall in the Province of New York, Thomas Gyles was 
made Chief Justice of the same, by Gov. Thomas Dongan, who suc- 
ceeded Andros, Sept. 30, 1682, as the ducal governor of New York. 

His name appears, with the names of eighteen others, attached to a 
petition addressed to Governor Dongan, dated in 1683, and entitled, 
" The Humble Petition of the inhabitants of the extreme partes of his 
Hiall Hiness Territory Between the River Kenybeke and St. Croix." 
The petitioners complain of the ducal government as "altogether 
arbytrary," and speak of its " Grand abusses as not to be endured any 
longer." 

Thomas Gyles was a man of wealth, and, as his son informs us, em- 
ployed a large income, which he annually derived from property be- 
longing to him in England, in improving and cultivating his lands at 
Pemaquid. He was also a gentleman of great personal worth ; of 
high religious character ; a careful observer of the 'Sabbath ; faithful 
and fearless in the discharge of all his duties. As a magistrate and 
ruler, who must be " a terror to evil doers," he met with much diffi- 
culty in enforcing the laws among a people who had long been accus- 
tomed to live without restraint. 

He lived at Pemaquid, happily and usefully, till August 2, 1689, 
when he was slain by the fierce and inhuman savages, instigated, as 
there is every reason to believe, by the French baron Castine and the 
Jesuit missionaries. 

Though an attack from the Indians upon Pemaquid was considered 
probable, and a degree of alarm was felt there and all along the coast — 
Dover having been utterly destroyed, June T, and several men killed 
at Saco in July — no special care was taken for the security of that 
important post.f At length, near the end of July, a war-party of one 

* The fort stood on the site where fort William Henry was built under the orders of Sir 
William Phips in 1692. This fort, destroyed by the French in 1696, was restored as Fort 
Frederic by Col. David Dunbar in 1729. The massive ruins still seen there, attest its former 
strength and durability. Proceeding northward from the fort was a handsome paved street, 
still in being, extending nearly a quarter of a mile. The old cellars and the ancient ceme- 
tery are still seen, although only one house is still in being in the former Jamestown. 
For a history and description of " Pemaquid, Ancient and Modern "—the modern derived 
from personal observation— see " The Gyles Memorial," by the present writer, pp. 540—548. 
See also the same work, pp. 103 — 120. 

t Tidings of the overthrow of the Stuart dynasty, and of the flight of King James, 
having been received in Boston, in April, 1689, the people rose in arms and deposed Andros,. 
2 



10 Thomas Gyles and his Neighbors. 

hundred Indians* came in canoes from Penobscot to New Harbor, a 
cove about two miles east of Pemaquid Port. Here were about twelve 
houses, but the inhabitants, upon the rumor of war, had deserted the 
place. Here the Indians left their canoes, and secreted themselves 
some days. They sent scouts to observe the condition of things at 
Jamestown, and to learn the best mode of attack. They learned that 
the men were generally absent during the day, leaving in the houses 
only the women and children ; that no suspicion of danger existed, 
and no efficient watch was kept ; that Mr. Gyles, the principal inhabi- 
tant, had on that second day of August, gone up, with fourteen hired 
men, to his farm at Pemaquid Falls, three miles distant ; while the rest 
of the people were scattered about, each attending his daily business. f 

The Indians, therefore, dividing themselves into several parties, fell 
at once upon the devoted settlement. Some posted themselves be- 
tween the fort and the houses ; others, between the houses and the 
distant fields, to cut off all succor. Then, beginning with those who 
were furthest off, they killed or took captive the people as they hurried 
towards the town and the fort. So complete was the surprise, that 
very few escaped. 

Meanwhile, a party of thirty or forty Indians proceeded up the 
Pemaquid river, on its eastern bank, in quest of Mr. Gyles. Three 
miles above the fort, and three miles below the present village of Bris- 
tol Mills, at one of his farms which lay upon the river, and adjoining 
Pemaquid Falls, they found him with his laborers and his three elder 
sons, Thomas aged nineteen, James aged fourteen, and John aged 
eleven. It was now one o'clock. The workmen, with Mr. Gyles and 
his sons, had dined at the farm-house, and had resumed their labor, 
some in one field on the English hay, the others in another field at a 
little distance gathering the English harvest of wheat or oats. Mr. 
Gyles and his sons, James and John, after dinner, tarried near the 
house. On a sudden, the report of several cannon at the fort was 
perceived. Mr. Gyles said he hoped it betokened good news from 
Boston, and that the Council of Safety had sent soldiers to protect the 
settlers at Pemaquid. But no ! It was the alarm given by the weak 
garrison of the stealthy approach of a merciless foe ! Immediately 
after, the Indians, from a rising ground in the near vicinity, announced 
their presence and their murderous purpose, by the terrific war-whoop, 
and a discharge of small arms at the unsuspecting party at the farm- 
house. The shot took effect on several of the laborers, and severely 
wounded Mr. Gyles himself, while his two sons near him vainly en- 
deavored to escape. The Indians rushed into the fields of hay and 
grain, killing some with their hatchets, and taking others captive ; 
the wounded men writhing in agony and calling on God for mercy. 

his unworthy representative there. The government of Massachusetts now became, of 
necessity, provisional in character, and of somewhat doubtful authority. The consequence 
was the neglect of Pemaquid and of other remote places. Many of the soldiers at Pema- 
quid, doubtful of their pay, had deserted from the fort, and Capt. Weems was left with only 
thirty men to defend that important place. 

* This was the number according to Charlevoix. They were Penobscot Indians, fresh 
from Castine's fort on the peninsula that now bears his unworthy name. Moxus, a Kenne- 
bec chief, was among them. 

t This information was given by John Starkey, a man of Pemaquid, who, on the morn- 
ing of the second of August, while on his way from the fort to New Harbor, fell info the 
hands of the Indians.. To obtain his liberty, he gave them the information they sought. 






Thomas Gyles and Ms Neighbors. 11 

The Indians at the Falls, having done what mischief they could, and 
leading the boys, James and John Gyles, and some others, as captives, 
now prepared to join their fellow-savages in the neighborhood of the fort. 
Proceeding a quarter of a mile, they made a halt. Here Mr. Gyles, 
covered with blood, was brought in by those who had taken him. 
Old Moxus, who seems to have known Mr. Gyles on the Kennebec, 
now professed to feel sorrow for what had been done, telling him that 
they were strange Indians who shot him. Mr. Gyles replied that he 
was a dying man, and desired no favor from them, save the privilege 
of once more praying with his children. He, then, in the hearing of 
his two sons, fervently commended them to the protection and favor 
of God ; gave them his parting counsels, and bade them a final fare- 
well for this life, in the earnest hope of meeting them in a better. 
"He parted with a cheerful voice," says his son, forty-seven years 
after, describing what he could never forget ; " but looked very pale, 
by reason of his great loss of blood ; which now gushed out of his 
shoes. The Indians led him aside ! I heard the blows of the hatchet, 
but neither shriek nor groan ! I afterwards heard that he had five or 
seven shot holes through his waistcoat or jacket, and that he was 
covered with some boughs." 

Such was the end of a man who never did the Indians any harm ; 
whose constant endeavor was to serve God and promote the good of 
his fellow men. 

The savages led their captives towards the fort, securing themselves 
from its guns, which the soldiers there were constantly firing, by going 
into a thick swamp, three-fourths of a mile distant therefrom. There 
they were joined by their fellows of the other party, who had taken 
captive the wife and the two young daughters of Thomas Gyles, found 
in the village of Jamestown. Samuel, the youngest son, who had seen 
only some eight or nine summers, happened to be at play near the 
fort, when the first onset was made, and, running in at the open gate, 
escaped. 

The eldest son of Thomas Gyles, named also Thomas, now nineteen, 
was with his father during the forenoon of that doleful day, dined with 
him, and was not far off at the time of the massacre. But the Pema- 
quid Kiver, near the falls, is easily forded ; and escaping from the 
horrid scene, he hurried across the stream, and ran down on its west- 
ern side to the Barbican, a point of land opposite the fort, where several 
fishing vessels lay. He went on board one of them, and sailed that 
night ; reached Boston in safety, and lived there many years. 

But the agonized widow of Thomas Gyles, who, like many other 
ladies of the olden time, " had come out of a paradise of plenty" [in 
the beautiful county of Kent in Old England]— she, and four of her 
children, the eldest about fourteen, and the youngest perhaps not 
more than four years of age, were led away into a captivity which 
seemed worse than death. Oh it was a sad thing for a delicate woman 
and four helpless children to be carried away, without warning, from 
the delights" of such a home, into the distant and lonely wilderness, 
and to find themselves in the power of men whose hearts knew no 
pity ! " brutish men and skilful to destroy ! " 

The fort surrendered on the second day, by a capitulation which 
allowed the garrison to depart unmolested, with what they could 
carry away. Had Captain James Weems, with his thirty well-trained 



12 Thomas Gyles and Us Neighbors. 

soldiers, seven great guns, and plenty of ammunition, possessed the 
courage and intrepidity of Captain James Converse, who, three years 
after, in this same war, with only fifteen men, successfully held Storer's 
garrison-house in Wells, when assailed by this same Moxus and four 
hundred French and Indians, the result would have been far different. 

The Indians, having set fire to the fort and the houses — there were 
about twenty houses then in Jamestown — retired to New Harbor, before 
mentioned ; and the next day set sail in their canoes for the Penobscot. 
They tarried eight days at Castine's fortification, on the beautiful pen- 
insula which bears his name, whence they departed about ten days 
before for the sack of Pemaquid. Here the afflicted widow of Thomas 
Gyles was separated from her two captive sons, never more to meet 
in this world. She and her little girls were redeemed, after a captivity 
of several years. Her two boys, James and John, were carried far 
up the Penobscot river, and thence to the river St. John ; where they 
suffered severely from the cold and from want of food and shelter. 
James, having reached the age of seventeen, and tired of three years' 
captivity, planned an escape. He was pursued by the Indians, re- 
taken at New Harbor, carried back to Castine, and there tortured to 
death over a slow fire, along with a settler from Casco who had been 
his companion in the attempt to escape. 

John Gyles, the third son of Thomas Gyles, was a captive and a 
slave to the Indians about six years, and was then sold to a French 
gentleman, a trader on the St. John, seventy-five miles from its mouth. 
This gentleman treated him kindly, and he was faithful to his master. 
Peace being being restored in 169*7, between France and England, he 
was allowed to return to the English settlements. On the 19th of 
June, 1698, he arrived in Boston, after a captivity, as he computes it, 
of 8 years, 10 months, and 17 days. His ample knowledge of the In- 
dian character and language led to his immediate employnlent, by the 
government of Massachusetts, as interpreter in their transactions with 
the Eastern Indians. In this employment, he continued most of the 
time for eight years. In 1706, he received a captain's commission, 
and was employed in the military service the greater part of the time 
for thirty years more. He was commander of Fort George at Pejep- 
scot [Brunswick] from 17 L5 till 1725, and of the garrison at St.' 
George's River [Thomaston] from 1725 to 1737. Being then on the 
verge of sixty, he retired from the military service, and took up his 
residence at Roxbury, near Boston, among the connections of his 
second wife, Hannah Heath, an aunt of Major General William Heath, 
of Revolutionary fame. Capt. John Gyles died in Roxbury in 1755, 
aged 77. He was, like his father, a true patriot, a faithful and vigi- 
lant officer, and a sincere Christian. No descendant of his name has 
lived since the death of his only son, Dr. Samuel Gyles of Salisbury, 
Mass., in 1739 ; but very estimable descendants, bearing other names, 
are now living in Newburyport and elsewhere. 

We must not omit some notice of James Gyles and John Gyles, 
who, there is much reason to think, were brothers of Thomas Gyles ; 
though the fact is at present not absolutely proved. 

James Gyles came, according to his own account,* from the vicinity 

* Wo refer to a MS. now existing in New Jersey among some of bis descendants, of 
which a copy was furnished by Hon. Charles 8. Olden of Princeton, formerly Governor of 
that State, to the Maine Historical Society in 1853. A transcript was made from this copv, 
by the writer of these notices, who printed it in full, in his Gyles Mkmokial, pp. 113-117. 



Thomas Gyles and his Neighbors. 13 

of Feversham in Kent, England. " We took our journey," he says, 
" on the 22d of August, 1668, from the Park to Feversham, and so to 
London, where we staid some days, till the ship was ready " — the ship 
from which he landed at Boston, in New England, Nov. 9, 1668. 
" The Park," here mentioned, must denote his residence, and the resi- 
dence of the Gyles Family, in England. This Park was in the Parish 
of Challock, which is in the Hundred of Felborough, in the Lathe of 
'ocray, County of Kent, England, on the river Stour, four miles east 
from Charing, and between Ashford and Feversham. The Gyles 
Family were residents in this Parish, possessed considerable estates 
there, and were also owners of land in Sheldwick, another Parish, 1\ 
miles south from Feversham, as early as the reign of Richard II., 1377— 
1399. [Ireland's Hist, of Kent (London, 1829), Vol. ii. p. 549.] A 
Lathe is a division of a County in England. Feversham is a seaport, 
9 miles west from Canterbury, and 41 east from London. 

James Gyles, with his wife Elizabeth, spent their first New England 
winter in Braintree, near Boston, where we find a trace of them on 
the town record, a daughter being born to them April 15, 1669. The 
winter being over, they proceeded by water to the Kennebec^ where 
Thomas Gyles had preceded them by only a short time. Hoisting sail 
from Boston, May 10, 1669, only two days after the date of his deed 
from Watkins, they arrived in Merry-meeting Bay on the 17th. There 
they staid till October 14, and then removed to Whidby — as he calls 
it, but the true name was Whisgeag, a creek or arm of the sea, extend- 
ing south from Merry-meeting Bay two miles into the land. He lived 
there two years ; then bought a house on Muddy river, near Thomas 
Gyles, where he lived three years and four months. The great Indian 
war then broke out (August, 1675), and he was obliged to leave Maine 
in August, 1676. Stopping a few weeks in Boston, he went to South- 
old on Long Island, where he remained till April, 1680. After one or 
two more changes, "we removed April 6, 1682," he says, " into our 
own house at Boundbrook, upon the Raritan river in Piscataway, in 
the East Province of New Jersey." He left no sons, but four daugh- 
ters. One of his descendants is ex-governor Olden, of New Jersey ; 
another was Major General William J. Worth, a distinguished com- 
mander in the Mexican war of 1846-7. 

John Gyles, presumed to be a brother of Thomas and James Gyles, 
was born in 1653, and came with wife Mary, born 1666, to reside at 
Pemaquid about 1685. He lived there in a house belonging to Thomas 
Gyles. Being a man of some education and social standing, he read 
prayers at the garrison from- June to November, 1688, and perhaps 
longer, though not in holy orders. He left Pemaquid at the outbreak 
of Indian hostilities, early in 1689 ; resided in Salem four or five years, 
where he taught school, and then removed to Boston, where he died 
August 29, 1730, aged 77. His grave-stone may still be seen in the 
Granary Burying Ground in that city. He has many descendants now 
living, but most if not all bear other names. Of this number are 
Thomas D. Quincy and George Mountfort, of this city. The children 
of Capt. Robert Gray, of Boston, whose discovery of Columbia River 
in 1790 laid the foundation of tlie claim of the United States to the 
immense regions through which that river flows, arc also descendants 
of this John Gyles. 



Postscript. — In the foregoing article, the death of Thomas Gyles, 
and the attack on Pemaquid, are said to have occurred on the second 
day of August, 1689. This is the date as given by Capt. John Gyles, 
son of the murdered man, writing in 1736 : who also represents the 
surrender of the Fort as having taken place on the following day. 
The same dates are given by Mather in his Magnalia, vol. ii. pp. 590, 
591 ; by Williamson, Drake, and other historians. But Capt. Weems, 
who commanded in the fort, says, in a petition to the Governor of 
Massachusetts, Lord Bellamont, 1700, that the surrender took place 
on the thirteenth of August, 1689, and the pay of the soldiers was 
reckoned and allowed up to that date. [Mass. Archives, 70 : 502.] 

Lossing, in his Pictorial Hist, of the United States, says the attack 
was made August 12, the surrender being the next day. If so, Mr. 
Gyles was killed on the twelfth of August, 1689. 

It is proper to advertise the reader that the name Gyles is pro- 
nounced with the G soft, as in giant, ginger, gypsum. 

For further information respecting the Giles or Gyles Family, the 
reader is referred to the Gyles Memorial, printed in Boston, 1864. 



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